More than magic, prayers and hope needed if Mayo are to scale Everest

I had weaned myself of the drug called Mayo GAA. Seven decades of highs and lows, the highs harder to hit, the lows dragging me along the bottom. I was out. Cold turkey, leaving this august paper after years on the front. The break had to be clean and abrupt. “Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me,” kinda break. And once out, I was liberated. I have to say that the current GAA format was a huge help, the National League reduced to no one wanting to win it, the provincials a wasteland and with 12 from 16 going forward from four groups to the knockout stage, what was there to miss? An All-Ireland final of paint drying proportions confirmed my sense of judgement. I was free.

Down the village for the morning coffee, the daily paper opened from the back page forward; how Rory McIlroy is doing a one man Mayo attempt at blowing finals and how after just four Premier League games the knives are out for Ange at Spurs, Slot at Anfield and Dyche at the Toffees. Spared for now are Howe at Newcastle, the latest Chelsea manager (name escaping me) and Ten Hag at United. Paper won’t refuse ink, everyone’s an expert (yes… me too). We all have an opinion. But I move on. Next month Rory will blow up somewhere else and the first three named Premier League mangers and clubs will have have swapped places with the latter three. In August 2021, Nuno Santo won Manager of the Month and eight weeks later was sacked by Spurs. Mad Ted isn’t it?

My phone beeped. A text from a friend. Attached to the message was a piece from the Western People informing us that the Mayo manager had invited the squad for a weekend lunch followed by a chat. My first sniff of that Mayo potion since I became clean. I should move on. And I did. Not biting. Past the rugby page on the paper, past the boxing, Dundalk’s travails and just before where the sport pages merges with latest deaths and the buy and sell, there we were. Mayo for Sam dancing in the autumnal summer weather. Another interview in the dead season about Mayo football. ‘The end goal is to win an All-Ireland’ ran the header. I sighed. We can never stay out of the rifle’s sights. An assassin’s dream, Mayo for Sam. The county that keeps on giving.

I sipped the coffee. Don’t bite… stay away… nothing to see here, was my hope. Then, on second thoughts, why not take a peek? I need not dwell. Just like Oisín coming back from Tìr na nÒg, pay a quick visit, make sure the horse’s belt holding the saddle doesn’t snap and I fall to earth, show my age and become a pain.

Let’s quickly survey the terrain from my horse’s saddle. Let’s look at the last 25 seasons since the turn of the century, 2000 onwards. What does that tell us? Counties that we deem no better than us, Galway, for example, have won two minor and four U21/20 All-Ireland titles in that era. Tyrone have four minor and five U21 titles to their name, Derry four minor, and Meath, Roscommon and Tipperary have as many minor titles as us, all since the turn of the Millenium. Not a great platform.

I looked at what Pat Gilroy did at the start of his third season, 2010/11. The previous two were awful – hosed by Kerry and Meath, startled earwigs and bust egos. Gilroy had made changes to the squad. Over his first two seasons out went some big names who were scarred from too many near misses. Out went lads whom he doubted, Philly McMahon being one of them. In came guys he would test across the coming season. Philly asked to be given another chance. The team were dragged down to Bull Island for 6am November training sessions in order to find out who wanted it bad enough and who didn’t like it stuck into ‘em. A no holds barred challenge up in Monaghan where anything went but the eye being on turnovers, pain and endurance.

Certain problems remained. They relied on their keeper for long range pressure frees but no longer would stars dictate the playlist on the pitch. Now it was choreographed plain bread on the field. The plan was bigger then the ego. The ‘I’ was out.

Look back on MK2 Dublin two seasons later in 2013, see the transformation, the sleekness, the evolution. But MK2 evolved because Dublin MK1 2011 had shed the monkey. Belief was from within, not a mantra. Again Philly put it well when comparing Mayo and Dublin. He saw Mayo as a solid opponent but inferred we were burdened by the supporters and our own need to win Sam. Dublin MK2 were using Dublin MK1 to make history and a six in-a-row. The final stage was, for us, an attempt to shed decades of pain, for them the final was the stage and platform to launch to a higher plane. Philly’s journey through grey and grim pain taught him titles are carved from granite, not given. There lies the difference.

Would Mayo countenance a back pack march up Croagh Patrick in the bare feet and a bottle of water in order to feel the pain of failure on final day? Only that we no longer make final day, nor semi-final day and lately, not even quarter-final day. If visits to Bull Island on foggy November mornings seem crude, check this out: after beating Donegal in that 2011 All-Ireland semi-final replay, Gilroy read out the stats to the players on the bus journey back to the hotel for the meal. From the November no holds match against Monaghan, their turnovers had increased substantially, their ball retention had shot through the roof. Donegal tested their resilience for pain, Kerry would now feel that improvement a few weeks later.

It wasn’t magic, prayers and hope that brought Dublin to the top of Everest. It was a manager who himself had built a business, a manager who played and won an All-Ireland both with club and county, a manager who didn’t much care for soft boys or inflated egos, a manager who broke many spirits on the wheel that Dublin was spinning to win Sam. And once those Dublin feet were held close to the fire, only Mayo for at least eight seasons were worthy challengers to them, otherwise they toyed with the rest. And whilst we mastered much of what they did, can we say we mastered their ability to absorb final day pain and learn from it? We went home surrounded with love and secure in the knowledge that we’d be back. Maybe that was our downfall; did we ever process the real pain of what losing should taste like? We knew we’d be back but did we really believe back to actually win?

What’s the difference between winning an All-Ireland and losing one? I truthfully haven’t a clue. But I can illustrate the difference between a winner’s gold medal and a plaque of timber given to the losers of finals past. Joe Kernan, Armagh manager in 2002, flung his 1977 All-Ireland runners-up prize across the dressing-room before letting his team out to play Kerry in the second-half of the 2002 final. The timber shattered. Players looked at a broken splinter and the choice was simple. Gold or timber? Have we ever exposed ourselves to that level of raw honesty? “Yah, yah” you may say, an old story from 2002, but that year begot Kieran McGeeney their then captain and this year McGeeney didn’t have to fling a piece of timber across the room. I don’t know what he did. Maybe he held up his gold medal and asked “Lads, do you want one of those too?” 

Since 2000, Armagh have annexed two Sams to the belt. Tyrone had none up to 2002, we had three. Tyrone now have four and us three still. Time passes, stay safe and you’ll get run over in the rush to the summit. We have stayed safe. I’m not advocating this, merely noting it: Páidí Ó Sé, legend from Kerry, eight times an All-Ireland winning player, twice a winning manager leading Kerry from their famine of 1987-96, was sacked in 2003. His language of Kerry followers was choice but Páidí was a realist; Kerry and their expectations of Sam were bigger than all. Even him. Brian Cody, Sean Boylan, Micky Harte… veritable legends and serial winners found out from their followers that time was merciless when it came for them to go. Colm O’Rourke’s status as a Meath great cut no ice a few weeks ago.

And us? Have been seen at Headquarters six times between 2012 and 2021, granted an almost access all areas pass, a chance to big it up but ultimately come home without the Oscar. And has the receding tide since shown us the shallowness of the depth of talent we need to stay close to relevance? The current championship format set up, where you’d almost need to be totally useless, has given us a fig leaf but where would we find our true selves if we faced the guillotine of yesteryear? Would 2004 and ‘06 have happened if we hadn’t gone belly up in 2000 and struggled the next two seasons? Would 2012 onwards to 2021 have happened had we not got a dose like against Longford in 2010. We’ve had an anaesthetic of multiple almost meaningless matches without jeopardy these last few seasons where we’ve foostered around teams like Cork, Louth, Roscommon and Cavan, before getting sliced by Kerry or Dublin, except this season a tired and jaded Derry beat us. Are we happily prolonging the major surgery needed, the replenishing of hunger to make us truly relevant once more?

Maybe having lunch with a group of players, allegedly unhappy with aspects of the set up, may be beneficial. Maybe a lot of hot air is spouted around the county team. Or maybe we actually have gone off the boil across the board. The season gone by saw our U20s beaten by most counties in Connacht, including Leitrim. We wound up in the U20 equivalent of the Tailteann Cup. Sligo and Leitrim, two counties we never countenanced other than a bit of head patting towards them, have bridged the gap between us and them comfortably at underage level the last few seasons. Reasons why anyone? Indeed I see a direction of improvement with Sligo’s seniors under Tony McEntee more than I do with our own journey. True they are a league or two below us but the gap is narrowing.

Dublin became great for many reasons – numbers, population, clubs’ competitiveness all helped – but the biggest help was the use of their plan, The Blue Wave in 2011, under the stewardship of John Costello. Quiet, efficient and ruthless, Costello and others saw the plan was followed. No plan lasts forever though, which is why Armagh and Tyrone stepped into the recent breach – a breach we couldn’t take advantage off. Having toiled in the field for 10 years, when the harvest was ready we found ourselves locked out. Again why? Is Mayo, the GAA beast, reading and working from the same page? When the McKennas of Kerry 1975-86, Tull Dunnes of Galway 1956-66, Greys and Costello of Dublin and Ginnitys of Meath were around, did they see county office as a landing spot or a takeoff spot? The answer to that is determined by the trophies won.

I hope the lunch went well. It might be hard to digest the grub knowing that either something or nothing is coming out of it. Beef or salmon, white or red wine or a November hike up Mweelrea or Nephin? A meal is digestible but the hike might be the required purgative.